Unit 7 - History

• Truman (u.s. prez) fights communism
• Iron Curtain - Division between east and west
• West - Democratic countries
• East - Soviet Union and Satellite states
• U.S. fears that Communism will spread to other countries
• U.S. feared that socialists would destroy democracy and capitalism. Soviet’s feared that capitalism would take over Europe.
• First World: US, Western Europe, and any place that embraced capitalism and a more or less form of democratic government.
• Second World: Soviet Union, its Satellites, mostly the Warsaw Pact nations, China, and Cuba
• 1911-1949 - Civil war between the Chinese Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-Shek & the Chinese Communists led by Mao Zedong
• During World War II they were forced to work together to resist Japanese occupation
• Fighting continues between Nationalists and Communists after WWII
• US aids the Nationalists to prevent the spread of communism but withdraws iits aid in early 1947 because they could not stop the civil war
• Nationalists had an advantage in numbers of men and weapons, but they were exhausted by the long war with Japan
• January 1949, the capital city was taken by the Communists and ts name changed back to Beijing
• Chiang Kai-shek and a few hundred thousand Nationalist troops fled from the mainland to the island of Taiwan
• December 1949 Chiang proclaimed Taipei, Taiwan the temporary capital of China
• Significantly, 1/5 of the world's population is now communist
• Mao won the support of China's large peasant population
• Peasants long suffered brutal landlords and high taxes for hundreds of years
• Communists promised to redistribute land to poor peasants and end the oppression by the landlords
• Nationalists polices resulted in economic hardship and widespread corruption
• Many Chinese resented Jiang's corrupt government and the government's reliance on support from Western imperial powers
• They hoped that Communists would build a new China and end foreign control
• China still doesn't like foreigners, Nationalists have western help, but communists didn't
• After Jiang Jieshi fled to Taiwan, the US supported his Nationalist government as the rightful representative of China
• US refused to recognize the mainland People's Republic of China which they saw as a communism threat
• China and the Soviet Union built relations until 1960s-1970s and were allies where neither controlled the other
• US allowed the People's Republic to replace Taiwan in the United Nations in 1971
• In 1979, the US built formal relations with China
• US didn't like China nor did they like US
• Cultural Revolution: Mao said he wanted to revitalize rebellion, he wanted to gain power (consolidating power)
• Little Red Book - Mao's communist sayings
• Africans fought on the side of Allies during World War II, but it only intensified their own desire for independent nations.
• The Charter of the United Nations stated that all colonial peoples should have the right to self-determination.
• Even if African nations had independence, colonial powers heavily influenced the political and economic systems.
• 1957 - The Gold Coast (renamed Ghana under the guidance of Kwame Nkrumah) was the first British colony to gain independence
• 1960 - the Belgian Congo (renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo) gained independence from the Belgians and Nigeria gained independence from the British
• 1975 - Portugal surrendered Mozambique and Angola
• 1956 - France granted full independence to Morocco and Tunisia
• France kept control over Algeria because of the million of French settlers, but a guerilla war led by Algerian nationalists led to its independence in 1962